


Keep Your Enemies Closer

by rikyl



Category: Veep
Genre: F/M, Gen, Yuletide Assignment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 10:20:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rikyl/pseuds/rikyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This isn't funny, Dan. This is Ohio."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Keep Your Enemies Closer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Malana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malana/gifts).



> This takes place post-Season 2. Selina is running for president, and it's Thanksgiving about a year before the election. I hope that timeline makes sense.

“Fucking hell!” Amy exclaimed under her breath, facing her laptop. “Who do I have fuck to get a room in fucking Cleveland?”

Dan smiled a little because he always liked to hear a woman curse like a congressional aide, especially when the woman looked like Amy. Then he did a double take. “You’re going to staff the Cleveland event?”

“Yeah, I’m going to staff the Cleveland event. I’m the _chief_ of _staff_. Why, are you trying to weasel your way into a higher position for the campaign?” She turned her head toward him with narrowed eyes. “Have you heard something?”

Dan would definitely like to weasel his way into a higher position for the campaign, and he’d been hoping to get a leg up in Cleveland, but he wasn’t about to mention that to Amy. “Stop being paranoid. I just thought you’d be spending Thanksgiving with your family, that’s all.”

Amy made a face, scrolling frantically through Hotels.com. “Why would I want to do that?”

Dan remembered her family and saw that she had a point. “Fair enough.”

She looked up at him suddenly. “Why aren’t you spending Thanksgiving with your family? You should.” Her voice was suddenly all sweetness. Like the conniving little minx thought she was going to push him out of this trip. “I can handle Cleveland. Just call the hotel and have them transfer your room to me.” 

“Oh, I don’t have a room. My family is _in_ Cleveland, so I’ll be doing both,” Dan informed her, and her sweet demeanor vanished in an instant. “Quick dinner with the rents, duck out for work, return after their bedtime, sneak out in the morning. I couldn’t have planned it more perfectly if I’d tried.”

She glared at him miserably, and he almost felt a glimmer of sympathy for her. Almost. 

“Why don’t you have a room?” he asked disinterestedly, flipping through some texts on his phone.

“The imbeciles in travel screwed up. They thought I was off for the holiday.” She said it like the idea of not working on a national holiday was absurd to her. “It’s barely even a holiday! Yeah, let’s all make loaded small talk while we eat fatty beige foods and forget to give a shit about Native Americans.”

She furiously punched some keys, like she actually gave a shit about racial atrocities, and Dan tried not to find this amusing. 

“Now there are no rooms,” Amy continued, “and everyone whose job it is to take care of this fuckup has gone home to their families. When did Cleveland get so popular anyway? Fucking holidays. Oh, fuck it. I’ll just drive back after we’re done.”

Dan raised his eyebrows at her. “We have that thing on Friday,” he reminded her. “The local precinct chairs.”

“Shit! Whatever. I just won’t sleep. I’ll find a wifi hotspot and work all night.”

He knew she’d do exactly that, just like he would in her position. It was weird sometimes, being so competitive with her, when they played the game the same way. 

“You know …” he started, wondering what he was doing. “My parents have a big house.”

She barely looked up. “What?”

“My parents. They have a big house. Extra rooms.”

He wasn’t really helping her, he told himself. She was going to be there no matter what, and he was just offering her a place to sleep. And then she’d owe him. Actually … 

“How many extra rooms?” She was eying him suspiciously. “Because if this is some kind of trick to try to get me to sleep with you, forget it. I don’t care if there’s one room with a twin-sized bed, and the apocalypse has happened, and you’re the only guy left on the planet. It is not happening.”

That seemed a bit harsh. “Even if the future of the human race depended on it?”

“The human race would die out before I’d carry your demon spawn.”

Dan shot her a dark look. He had half a mind to take the offer back, but he’d already decided this could be useful to him. “Do you want a place to sleep or not?”

“Okay, fine,” she snapped, then added, grudgingly, “Thank you.”

“No problem,” Dan said. “There’s just one little thing I need from you in return.”

“I knew it. As if you could do a simple favor for a fellow human being without extracting some kind of quid pro quo.”

“Just come to Thanksgiving dinner with me.” He looked down at his phone again, trying to make this sound like it was a totally valid, routine request. “And make like we’re dating.”

"Oh my god. You want me to pretend to be your girlfriend? This is too much. This is—" 

“Come on, it’s nothing. Eat turkey and make small talk with my mom for an hour, easy." Amy opened her mouth, shut it again, and started to shake her head. "Just to get my family off my back,” he added quickly. “My brother’s recently married. You know how it is.”

Dan attempted a meaningful face, and there, that should do it. If he just made her think that _his_ family was like _her_ family, all earnest and annoying and shit, she’d sympathize. She might even want to help him out.

Or maybe not, because she was Amy. But she wanted the room, so …

Her face twisted for a few more moments, then settled into a serene smile that suggested her motives were less than pure. But he didn’t think it mattered why she was doing it. She’d be there, and that might be all the distraction he needed. The buffer. The grease in the wheels that might help him, against all odds, to actually pull this thing off.

“Whatever. I’ll pretend to be your …” She made a face, instead of saying the word. “I’ll sit next to you.”

“Then you got yourself a deal.”

\--

On Air Force Two, the new campaign people Selina had brought on had segregated themselves from her regular staff, and Dan strained to hear their conversation, annoyed that he might be out of the loop. For newbies to the veep’s inner circle, they sure were full of themselves. Hopefully they’d start valuing what he had to offer a little more after today. 

Dan tapped his foot, anxious for everything to go according to plan, and glanced over at Amy. She was furrowing her brow as she worked on something, probably last-minute edits to Selina’s remarks. 

As fake girlfriends went, he thought she was going to do the trick nicely. She wasn’t the _most_ attractive woman he’d ever dated, but she was definitely attractive. More so than his brother’s wife, he thought. But more importantly, she was smart and successful, in the high-powered cut-throat way that his family respected. 

Well, maybe respect was a strong word, but she’d probably survive the encounter at least.

He leaned across the aisle and gave Amy a quick nudge on her knee to catch her attention. “Hey. You nervous?”

Amy tapped her pen against her padfolio without looking up and kept writing whatever she was writing. “Why would I be nervous?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Girlfriend, meeting the new boyfriend’s parents for the first time. Can be pretty intense.”

“One, I can fake-schmooze with strangers in my sleep. It’s practically in my job description. And two,” she said, finally looking up to meet him square in the eyes, “I’m not your girlfriend, never have been, never will be, so you can give up on that little fantasy right now.”

“Good,” Dan retorted. “I’m glad you’re not. It’s not like _I’m_ enjoying this, you know.”

“Then why are we doing it?” she hissed. “Why wouldn’t you just tell them I’m a colleague who needs a place to sleep for the night, and we could skip the whole juvenile charade?”

So the whole cool-as-a-cucumber thing was an act, Dan thought smugly. 

“I have my reasons,” he answered vaguely, hoping she wouldn’t press further. Part of him thought this might go better if he filled her in, but a bigger part of him didn’t want her to be able to take any credit for it if he pulled it off. And to be honest, a few of the details were a little seedy, and he’d rather not own up to them.

“Fine.” She returned to her work and he thought for a moment that the conversation was over. “Who’s going to be at this thing anyway? Just your parents?”

“Mom, dad, brother, sister-in-law.”

She made a face. “Kids?”

“Kids? Noooo.” The idea of Nick and Stacy with kids almost made him snort. Maybe if they could order them straight out of central casting to parade in front of the press on demand. “No, they haven’t been married that long.”

Amy glanced up again, her brow furrowed like she was trying to remember something. “Your brother’s somebody, isn’t he? In state politics?”

Dan tensed. “Yeah, I guess. Freshman state senator.”

She nodded dismissively, which was gratifying somehow. It didn’t matter how much Dan’s brother puffed himself up; he wasn’t important enough for Amy Brookheimer to give a damn about, and that was going to be fun to watch.

“You want to look over these remarks for me?” she said suddenly, reminding him they had a lot more going on that day than seeing his family. 

“For the soup kitchen or the meet and greet?” 

Selina was scheduled to help serve dinner at a local homeless shelter before having a private dinner with her daughter at the home of local “friends,” after which some other loaded and well-connected “friends” were invited to join them for drinks and some good ol’ fashioned wallet-opening. 

“The soup kitchen. I’m really worried about striking the right tone there.”

Dan took the sheet from her and read it over quickly. “Too many big words.”

“She can’t sound condescending, though. Or motherly. She’s running for leader of the free world.”

“Obviously, but talking to homeless people? Yeah. They’re probably not all unemployed liberal arts majors. I mean, maybe, in this economy, but this is Cleveland. They’re not going to understand half of this.”

“Who really gives a shit if they understand all the words? Most of them aren’t going to vote. They’re not going to go tell all their friends at the shelter to donate to the campaign. We’re there for the local news coverage.”

Dan raised his eyebrows at her cynical acknowledgement. Oh, she was going to fit in at the Egan household just fine.

“And the local bums are props?”

“I wouldn’t put it like that. They’re people, they’re people we’d be in a better position to do something for if we win this. But … basically, today, yeah.”

“I think you nailed it then.”

\--

Dan kept checking the time on his phone, willing this event to end. The room smelled like body odor and turkey ass. 

Selina had already had her picture taken with a ladle, said her remarks, and now she was circulating through the room, so they should be done any time now.

“Someone should get the hand sanitizer away from her,” one of the campaign jerks muttered nearby.

“You’ll have to pry it out of Gary’s cold dead hands. It’s flu season,” Amy said. “Why, what’s wrong?”

“Aren’t you paying any attention?” said the new guy, someone not important-seeming enough for Dan to care about learning his name. “Gary keeps handing it to her after every interaction. She looks like she thinks she’s going to get cooties from these people.”

Dan glanced up from his phone to survey the situation, just in time to see Selina grimacing as she turned away from a group of homeless vets, automatically accepting the little bottle from Gary and smearing it thoroughly, almost theatrically, on her hands. A camera flashed, just before she handed it back, reapplied her bright candidate smile, and turned to the next table.

“Crap. That one’s going in the _Cleveland Herald_ for sure,” Dan said.

“No shit,” squeaked the new guy.

“Well, take care of it!” Amy shrieked in hushed tones, shoving the guy on the arm. “What are you doing here, making useless observations? If that’s the image that comes out of this, you’re the one who’s going to fry.”

Startled, the guy stumbled forward toward the veep. He spoke to Gary, who seemed to be taking offense. Gary hoisted the bottle high in the air, and the other guy indignantly leaped for it, knocking it from his hand.

And right into a woman’s plate in front of Selina.

Selina looked horrified for a split second before recovering, her fake laugh ringing out across the hall. “Where did that come from? Ha ha! Well. Guess your stuffing’s going to have a little extra kick today,” she quipped.

The new guy retreated, looking shrunken and red-faced. 

“He’s not going to last,” Dan observed.

“Not a chance,” Amy agreed, wincing as she watched the woman pick the little bottle out of her food and wipe it on a napkin. “I hope she’s not an alcoholic.”

\--

On the sidewalk outside his parents’ house, Dan took a deep breath. They had two hours until they needed to be back with Selina to greet all the Mr. and Mrs. Moneybags of western Ohio. It sounded like a long time to spend with his parents. And yet, an impossibly short time to accomplish what he wanted.

“Do I look okay?” Amy said suddenly. It was such a girly question and so unlike her usual self that for a second Dan didn’t know how to respond.

“Do you look okay?” he echoed dumbly, and her face slammed shut into something far more recognizable.

“Forget it. I just wanted to know if I had gravy on my face or something. As if you’d tell me.”

“Yeah, no, you look … I mean, I liked you better in the apron back at the shelter. That was a good look for you,” he teased, trying to lighten things up.

“Okay, that’s enough.” She glared at him and started marching forward, as if to her own execution. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Hey, wait a second,” he said, catching up to her.

She turned around impatiently. “Yes?”

“I don’t know.” He considered her less-than-friendly body language and suddenly wondered how this was ever going to be believable. “Should we hold hands or something?”

She pulled a face that was definitely more recognizably Amy. “Hold hands? Like we’re in the seventh grade?”

Dan balked at her incredulous tone. “Okay, you tell me. How do people in a relationship act? We have to do something to indicate we’re not mortal enemies.”

“Have you seriously never been in a relationship? Of course you haven’t.” Her voice took on a patronizing tone. “This is just dinner. They’re not going to be expecting PDA’s. Just stay close—not too close—and be nice to me. Can you handle that?”

“I can handle that. When am I not nice to you?” She rolled her eyes again, and he flinched. “Other than … the obvious examples.”

On the doorstep, Dan rang the bell, and after a moment his mother opened the door and eyed him severely.

“Daniel Christopher Egan,” she said his name slowly and ominously. “I didn’t think you were going to show your face here.”

Oh, this was going to be fun.

\--

“Well, that was fun,” Dan said, safely inside one of the guest rooms upstairs a few minutes later.

Immediately, Amy started poking him furiously in the chest until he was backed up against a wall, and Dan put up his hands in mock-surrender until she backed off slightly.

“What the hell was that?” she whisper-shouted at him.

“You’re a woman of the twenty-first century. Why would you assume that every married woman took her husband’s surname?” he deflected.

“She’s in her 50s! We’re in Ohio!”

He’d known he was in for it as soon as Amy had uttered the perfectly reasonable-sounding words _Nice to meet you, Mrs. Egan_. He just hadn’t thought it’d come up that quickly. “I thought you’d be on a first-name basis right away, I guess,” he admitted sheepishly.

“More to the point, why the fuck did you never tell me your mother was _the Miranda Phillips_ , you imbecile? Do you know how connected she is?”

“Of course I know how connected she is. She’s my mother.”

“She could get us endorsements from every women’s—”

“I know! I know, okay? I’m working on it. It’s … complicated.”

Amy narrowed her eyes at him. “Does Selina know you’re related?”

“I don’t think so. She’s never mentioned it.”

“How is that possible, Dan? Didn’t you have to pass a security check, or did you slither up from the sewers into the White House without anyone noticing?”

“I guess somebody in the White House knows,” Dan admitted, shrugging. “It’s the federal government, though. The right hand doesn’t always know what the left hand is doing.”

And he’d never exactly volunteered the information to anyone who mattered—like he’d want it getting around that he couldn’t guarantee the political support of his own mother. 

Unless this worked, of course, and then she’d be the ace in his pocket.

“Does she hate you or something?”

“Not … exactly. I did something that she’s not too happy about.” Or more accurately, did _someone_.

Amy shot him a look that managed to convey both exasperation and a lack of surprise. “Nice work,” she muttered. “It’s not like Ohio is important or anything.”

“Which is why we’re _here_.”

She grimaced, and he could practically see the wheels turning, regrouping, strategizing, and he couldn’t help but grin. 

“So … what?” she mused. “I’m supposed to play nice, try to make you look respectable or something?”

He bobbed his head from side to side, debating if he should come clean about the rest of it. “Something like that.”

She glared at him disbelievingly. “That is a fucking tall order.”

“That’s why I brought in only the best.”

“Don’t schmooze me.” She picked up her little suitcase like she was going to carry it off somewhere. “Where am I sleeping?”

“Just leave your stuff here for now. Gotta make it look we’re together.” Her nostrils flared, and he got the feeling his back was about to become acquainted with the wall again. Not that he’d mind that too much, but they hardly had time. “Cool it, okay? We’ll get back late tonight after they’re in bed, and you can move your stuff to one of the other guest rooms. No one will be the wiser.”

“Fine.”

“Speaking of, we better get down there before they think we stopped for a quickie.” He reached for the doorknob. “So we’re good?”

“I don’t know, Dan. Is there anything else you want to warn me about? Is your dad a mobster? Is he in big oil?”

“Worse,” Dan said with a faint smile. “He’s perennially disappointed in his youngest son.”

\--

The sound of six people chewing overcooked poultry was almost deafening.

“I’m sorry Dan didn’t give you more warning that we were coming,” Amy apologized brightly, breaking the awkward silence like a pro. “We’ve just been so busy with the campaign heating up. And also all the work we still want to get done during this term. You know how it is.” She smiled ingratiatingly at his mother.

“It sounds like you’re too busy for a relationship,” his dad cut in, frowning sternly at Dan. “I would think this would be a moment you would want to focus on your career. Finally make something of yourself.”

Dan ignored his father’s tone and the persistent implication that he was always one step away from fucking everything up. “That’s why it’s so great that we work together, right, Amy? We just work, work, work. That’s practically all we do.”

“Work, work, work,” Amy agreed on cue. “Dan is a very dull boy.”

“Does Selina know about this?” his mother asked judgmentally. “I wouldn’t think she’d appreciate fraternizing among her staff members.”

“Oh, she ... she doesn’t have an exact policy pertaining to—” Dan exchanged an uncertain look with Amy, who thankfully jumped in.

“We keep it out of the office. And you know Selina.” Amy exchanged a well-timed glance with Miranda, subtly planting the idea of a connection between the two women. “She’s very results-oriented, and Dan’s a valuable member of the team.”

That must have been hard for her to say. Suddenly he wished he had some sort of recording device for this conversation.

“What is it you do again, Danny?” Nick butted in. “You’re in charge of the veep’s twitter account or something? You tweet things?”

“Director of New Media,” Dan seethed, “but my actual responsibilities encompass a wide range of—”

“Oh, I bet you get around a lot,” Nick smarmed, throwing a look at Amy that made Dan’s blood boil for the first time since they got there.

“I do actually,” Dan said evenly, pretending he didn’t get what his brother was referring to. “We fly all over the country on Air Force 2.”

“I’m surprised they let you within ten miles of a campaign. Aren’t they afraid you’re going to get your skinny dick tangled up somewhere it’s not supposed to be?”

Dan couldn’t believe Nick was going there, with his fake girlfriend sitting right next to him. Not to mention Stacy, who was fake in own ways, but still, his wife technically.

“So how about those Indians?” Amy chirped uncomfortably.

“Nobody cares about the goddamned Native Americans, Amy,” Dan snapped at her, more harshly than he intended because his brother was making him tense.

“The Cleveland Indians,” Amy said under her breath. “Baseball. Safe topic.”

“Enough!” his mother scolded. “Dan, don’t you dare take the lord’s name in vain in this house.”

He noticed she didn’t say anything to Nick, even though Nick didn’t look like he was stand down from this conversation. His wine glass was almost empty, and Dan wondered how much he’d had to drink before they’d arrived.

Well, good, let Nick come unhinged. Dan could be the calm one, the grownup in the room for once.

“Let it go,” Dan said quietly to his brother, glancing significantly at the three women at the table. “Now is not the time.”

“What, you thought we would just forget about what you did because you brought this pixie-faced harpy to dinner?”

Dan gritted his teeth and fought to stay calm. “She is chief of staff to the most powerful woman in the world. You’re not even a ranking member on the Ohio State Senate’s party-planning committee.”

Nick chortled. “Selina Meyer, the most powerful woman in the world. What a joke. What has she done? No, seriously, name me one thing you guys have gotten done.”

“That’s an excellent point,” Miranda chimed in. “I’d like to hear all about this very important work you two have supposedly been doing.”

From there, the conversation turned to his mother dissecting in patronizing fashion every miss, misstep, mistake, and outright disaster of Selina’s vice presidency, with his father speculating intermittently about the role his son’s recklessness and lack of focus probably played in each and every fuckup. Dan was relieved to be back on safer ground—at least this was familiar territory.

Amy looked a little less comfortable as they parried back and forth defending their candidate and their work, leaning heavily on talking points and sugarcoating a lot of shit. She was in her element, but Dan could tell it was wearing on her. Attacks on her ability to do her job were basically Amy’s kryptonite, and it didn’t help that this fake relationship they’d concocted seemed to be front and center in the things his parents seemed to think were distracting him from more important things.

At one point, when the insults were being directed more at the candidate than her present staff members, Miranda zeroed in on Selina’s personal life. “I don’t understand why she and Andrew couldn’t have stayed married. She doesn’t mind the guy since she parades him about whenever she feels like it.”

Dan could feel Amy bristling beside him, but his mother wasn’t finished.

“And clearly that sort of casual relationship to morality is pervasive among her supporters.” Miranda looked sharply down her nose toward Dan and declared definitively, “I just don’t think I can support a campaign that cares so little about family values.”

And there it was—it wasn’t about Selina’s vice presidency at all. It wasn’t about anything that happened in the White House. It was about one stupid mistake he made in a coat closet at a campaign event in Ohio two fucking years ago.

Amy seemed to get that too, or at least the gist of it, because immediately she burst out, “That’s bullshit.”

Dan raised his eyebrows at her, imploring her silently not to lose her shit right now (not that it really mattered at this point, unless he could get a time machine to take him back to 2012 and stay the hell away from Stacy). The rest of the table fell silent too, looking at Amy expectantly.

“Excuse me?” his mother said, looking her most terrifying, which was pretty goddamned terrifying if you were Miranda Phillips. It was the expression his childhood nightmares were made of.

For a second Dan thought Amy was going to back off and apologize, and they could make their excuses and cut out of there, since this was obviously a failed mission. But instead, she doubled down, her cheeks puffing out and her eyebrows cutting two perfectly diagonal slashes above her eyes in that way that always reminded him of a cartoon villain’s. Dan put a reflexive hand on her forearm, but it was like throwing a piece of foam on a dam that was about to break.

“I said that’s bullshit. This isn’t about family values. This is about _your family_ ,” she said, and it was like the air had been sucked out of the room. Nobody ever talked back to his mother like this, and Dan couldn’t look away. It was like she was attempting some kind of crazy hail mary pass. There was no way this was going to work, but he had to at least let her try.

“Okay, I get it, you don’t like Dan,” Amy spat out, her eyes starting to bug out. “I don’t like him either. We’re not even a couple.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, she’s just had a rough day,” Dan jumped in in a panic, as he realized that Amy was basically just taking the ball on their last play and getting ready to fling it into the cheapseats. “We had a little tiff this morning, lovers’ quarrel, and she’s trying to get back at me. Come on, Amy,” he said to her under his breath. “You don’t want my parents to think that we’ve been lying to them all day.”

Their eyes locked, and he hoped she was realizing what a bad idea this was. So this was not going well. But blowing their cover completely wasn’t exactly going to score them any points. 

She glared at him, her nostrils flaring. “No, Dan, you’re right, I misspoke,” she said, but the way she said it wasn’t exactly reassuring, and he held his breath. “We should be honest with your parents. The truth is, we’re not in love. I can’t even stand him. We’re just fucking.”

Dan snorted, almost choking. His mother gasped and his father muttered something angry-sounding, but Amy was apparently just ramping up.

“Yeah, that’s right. We’re fucking. I’m using him for sex because it’s convenient and he’s there and I’m busy working around the clock on _a presidential campaign_ , one that _you_ should be on board with.” She set her eyes to bear accusingly down on his mother. “I don’t know what all Dan did to let you down. Or you,” she added to his father. “I can imagine what he did to you,” she mumbled toward his sister-in-law, then returned her focus to the family matriarch, one of the most influential women in the state. “But I never thought you’d be the kind of woman to let personal grievances stand between you and your principles.”

He could practically see the steam blowing out his mother’s ears. She opened her mouth, but Amy didn’t let her get a word in.

“Come on, Dan,” Amy said, standing up. “We’ve got actual work to do.”

\--

Seconds later, they were running down the sidewalk, throwing on their coats in their haste to make an escape.

At the street, Dan put his hands on his knees and burst out laughing.

“This isn’t funny, Dan. This is Ohio.” Amy was glaring at him indignantly, like he was the one who had just totally, gloriously lost his cool. “This amuses you?”

“Not really,” he said. Actually, at the moment he was see-sawing between despair that his plan to become a crucial player in the campaign had gone so awry, and delight at pissing his parents off again. The latter was kind of winning, and he didn’t want to think about what that said about him. And anyway, there were more interesting things to focus on just now.

“Did you just tell my parents we’re fucking?’” God, he was still in disbelief. It had been magnificent. Horrifying, but magnificent. “We’re just fucking?”

“I needed to distance myself from you.” She looked back at the house, her face twisting in uncertainty now that she couldn’t take it back. “You’re not exactly Selina’s biggest selling point in there, you know.”

Dan tried not to notice that by distancing herself from him, Amy had been trying to accomplish the same thing he’d been by associating himself with her.

“And you’re the one who didn’t want me to blow your ridiculous cover,” she added defensively.

“I’m not sure your creative twist on the cover story went over any better.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I wanted to see their heads explode.” She glared at him again, but with less of the conviction she’d had before. “I’m not proud of it.”

“You should be. I am.”

“Oh, good,” she said dryly. “Because you were who I was trying to impress.”

“I knew you wanted me,” he needled her, and she pointedly ignored him.

“Should we get our bags? We can’t really go back there tonight.”

“Nah, it’s fine.” Dan shrugged. “I’ve got a key. They go to bed early. We won’t have to see anyone.”

“Right. Okay. Let’s get out of here then before anything else goes wrong. Are your neighbors anyone important? Think we could lose their support today, too? We probably have a few minutes until someone picks us up.”

A panicky thought hit him suddenly. “You’re not going to say anything to Selina, are you?” He kept his voice casual, like it was no big deal. He had a lot of practice at that sort of thing.

“That I just yelled at Miranda Phillips? Um, no. Wasn’t going to bring that up.”

“Thanks,” he said sincerely, and let out a small sigh of relief. 

She glanced at him, a little too all-knowingly for his comfort. “Hey, I can’t get my mother to endorse my weekend plans.”

It might be the nicest thing she had ever said to him.

“What?” she snapped, tapping away at her phone.

“Nothing.” He looked away, down the street.

“Car’s going to be here to pick us up any second.”

\--

“What I don’t get,” Amy said, sipping slowly from her glass of champagne as she surveyed the room of potential donors, “is why you thought my being there was going to somehow smooth over the fact that you slept with Nick’s wife.”

“Nick’s _fiancée_ ,” Dan corrected her. “They weren’t married then.”

“Mmm, no, doesn’t make it better.”

“He was sleeping around on her at the time. Does that make it better?”

“While running for office?”

“Yep.”

“And they still got married.”

Dan shrugged. “He was running for office.”

“But your parents are mad at you, not Nick.”

“Because Nick’s Nick. They think he’s going to be governor someday. At least.”

“And they think you’re going to be …”

“I don’t know, official tweeter of an also-ran?”

Amy snorted, and he grabbed her another drink off a tray that was circulating.

He didn’t want to have to explain the plan. He didn’t want to have admit that he’d thought landing someone like Amy would make him look serious and credible, that he’d had some hare-brained fantasy that walking in with her on his arm might put on a level to rival his brother in their eyes.

“We should be networking,” Amy said. “Maybe we can still salvage something out of this disaster of a day.”

Dan’s eyes fixated on a young redhead in a slinky black dress. She looked like a nice way to salvage the day. And she was in this room, so maybe she knew someone who knew someone. Two birds, one stone. Or rather, one bird … unless he found a second bird to join them …

“I think I’m going to network with her,” he said, starting to wander off, but Amy jerked him back by the arm. Damn, she was surprisingly strong.

“Like hell you are,” she snapped. “You’re not fucking some other woman while I’m sleeping down the hall.”

He raised an eyebrow, suddenly cheered up a bit. “Jealous, are we?”

Before she could yell at him again, something caught her eye. “Fuuuuuuuck. She’s _here_. Get down.”

“Who?” Dan’s head whipped around, just in time to see his mother walking across the room. “Get down? Where?”

“I don’t know! Hide somewhere.”

“What? Where?”

She grabbed his arm and dragged him behind a pillar.

“You’re right. We’re practically invisible now.” He squeezed closer, trying to stay out of view.

Amy ignored him, her eyes wild and panicked. “What do you think she’s doing here? Can you see anything? Is she talking to Selina?” 

“You mean telling on us? Fuck! Probably.”

“Do something!” 

“Do what? It was your idea to hide.” Not that he could fault her for that—this pillar she’d dragged him behind was narrow, and they were standing so closely now that he could see down her dress.

“I’m not taking the fall for this. She’s your mother.” He jerked his eyes back up, remembering the situation.

“And you’re the one who pissed her off.”

“Oh, as if you haven’t spent a lifetime—”

One of the campaign nitwits noticed them just then and looked down his nose at what, Dan realized belatedly, must look like something a lot more interesting than it was. “Don’t you two have something better to be doing—for the vice president?”

Amy practically launched herself at the poor fucker, brandishing her pointer finger like a weapon. “We do plenty! We’ve been in the trenches all along, and where have you been, you prepubescent hanger-on?”

“Easy,” Dan muttered, hoping she wasn’t drawing any attention to them. He surveyed the room as well as he could and caught a glimpse of his mother’s coat, walking back toward the front door.

The coast was clear, evidently. 

He wondered if it was safe to come out.

\--

Sometime later, Selina walked by and caught Amy’s eye. 

“Amy, there you are! Miranda Phillips stopped by. Did you see that? It sounds like she’s going to be very helpful with the women’s groups.”

“Did she mention me?” Dan asked, his throat tightening.

“Of course not. Why would she mention you, Dan? Just because you grew up here doesn’t mean you’re the state’s golden fucking son.”

It was like being sucker-punched.

“Of course not,” he echoed faintly. 

He couldn’t exactly take credit for winning over a woman who wouldn’t even acknowledge they were related. It was worse than if she hadn’t come at all.

As Selina walked away, he and Amy exchanged an uncomfortable look.

“At least she’s helping the campaign,” Amy said, but she looked like she’d just swallowed the semen of the worst man on earth. Himself, probably, in her eyes.

“Yep.” 

Dan glanced around trying to spot the buxom redhead again. He was definitely going to need to get her info.

\--

Back at the house, he was just getting ready to crawl under the covers to hide from himself when a soft knock sounded on the door.

Dan was so surprised to see Amy on the other side, clad in yoga pants and an oversized sweatshirt, that he forgot to make a crack about her crawling back to him. “What are you doing here?”

“There are no other rooms.”

“What do you mean, there are no other rooms? What about …” He glanced around, seeing that the door across the hall was shut now, and so was the one on the other end. “Who’s here?”

“Your brother and his serpentine wife are here.”

“Yeah, I know, but … who’s in the other room?”

“The serpentine wife! I came out of the bathroom and tried to go to bed, and they had claimed both rooms while I was in there.” 

A smile started to spread across Dan’s face. “They’re not sleeping in the same room? That’s awesome.”

“Yeah, not so awesome. Where am I supposed to sleep tonight?”

Almost involuntarily he glanced backward at the bed in his own room, and Amy started backing away. 

“Hey, hey. Don’t be like that. It’s not a big deal. Look at how big that bed is.”

“It’s about as big as my entire apartment,” she conceded.

She looked like she was actually considering it, and that was when he noticed how tired she looked. A sliver of weakness in the armor—it was kind of nice considering how he felt right now.

“I’ll stay on my side. There’s extra bedding in the closet, so we don’t even have to share a blanket.”

“Yeah. Fine, okay,” she finally said, resigned. 

Amy sat down on the bed and reached into her bag, revealing a bottle of nice scotch. “I swiped it from your dad’s bar. Do you mind?”

“Are you kidding? I love you.” Dan slammed his mouth shut, realizing how that sounded. “I say that to any woman who shows up with expensive liquor.”

Amy didn’t seem to notice. She tilted the bottle to her mouth and took a swig, and he watched her throat muscles as she swallowed. “Yeah, I know you’re incapable of human feelings,” she said absently, and it seemed to Dan that maybe her heart wasn’t really in the insult anymore. Or maybe that was wishful thinking on his part. Not because she was Amy. Because she was a woman, and she was sitting on his bed.

She handed him the bottle. He sat down on the other end and took a long drink, watching her stare off into space, her brow furrowed just slightly.

They passed the bottle back and forth for a few more moments, silently.

“It’s so weird being here,” she finally said. “I think you’re actually the least detestable person in this house. And that’s saying something.”

“Thanks,” he said dryly.

“At least now I know where you get the coldhearted asshole gene from.”

“Whereas with you, it just comes naturally,” Dan couldn’t help retorting. She glared at him, and he amended, “I mean that in the best possible way.”

She rolled her eyes and drank some more.

“What kind of mother wouldn’t be happy her son had someone to care about him? Even if it wasn’t true. She didn’t know that to start out with.”

Dan shrugged, not wanting to get into it. Avoidance. That was how he liked to deal with things.

“And I am a catch,” Amy said, with slightly drunken intonations.

Dan didn’t quite trust himself to respond to that, not at the moment when the liquor was starting to course through his veins and he felt himself mesmerized by her mouth.

The moment broke when Amy set the bottle down and stretched out on top of the comforter, closing her eyes.

“Your brother came on to me, by the way.”

A burst of something half-assed and rage-like flared in Dan’s chest. “What? When?”

“Just now. When I walked in on him.”

“Motherfucker. Motherfuckin’ idiot.” He glanced sheepishly at her. Her eyes were closed, her face completely serene, but he felt the need to apologize anyway. It was a hell of a lot easier to apologize for things someone else did. “Sorry about that.”

“Say the word and I could destroy him,” she said, without moving a single unnecessary facial muscle.

Dan snorted. It was a tempting, and he appreciated that she could do it, that she would do it, but he didn’t really like the idea of giving Nick that much importance. 

“Seems like he’ll probably do it to himself eventually anyway.”

“True,” Amy agreed.

He got up and went to the opposite side of the bed, stretching out beside her in his sweatpants and undershirt, careful to leave enough space between them so as not to spook her.

“Do you ever wonder …” he started with the vague feeling he was going to regret going down this path tomorrow but not quite being able to stop himself at the moment.

“Hmm?”

“Do you ever wonder what would have happened between us if I hadn’t … if things had gone differently?”

She snorted. “You mean if you were a completely different person? I don’t have to wonder. I have dated men who were completely different from you, and it’s great.”

“Yeah, but none of them as convenient as me. And you’re a busy woman.” It was stupid, he knew, there were about nine different reasons why he should be hitting on her, but the casual hookup scenario she’d inadvertently brought up was strangely alluring.

Before she could shoot him down, his cell phone beeped, indicating a text message. Annoyed, he picked it up, surprised to see the image of the perky little redhead greeting him, Hey I’m outside let me in. I’ll make it worth your while!

He briefly wondered about the sexual and/or political implications of that promise before realizing he had to get rid of this girl. 

Unless he made Amy sleep on the couch in the living room. 

No, he couldn’t do that. 

_Fuck._

“Hey, I gotta go take care of a thing real quick,” he said, hopping out of bed and sliding open the bedroom window, like he was 15 all over again. “Don’t go anywhere.”

The look Amy gave him as he slipped out managed to appear both disinterested and judgmental.

When he got back a couple minutes later, she was asleep, or at least pretending to be. 

He wasn’t sure if he was disappointed or relieved.

After a moment, he opened the closet and pulled out a couple thick blankets, throwing one over her and keeping the other for himself. Cocooning himself in it, he faced the wall and closed his eyes, impatient for morning and the next chance to prove something. 

\--

Back on Air Force 2 the next day, Dan popped three ibuprofen tablets into his mouth and washed them down with some black coffee. He felt hungover, and not just from the alcohol.

Amy looked totally normal, and he couldn’t decide whether to be annoyed by that.

“So you’re coming back next year, right?” he joked, trying to get a reaction out of her of some sort.

“After we win the election, to rub it in their faces? Hell yeah. Can I get my own room next time?” 

“Yeah,” Dan said, unsure why his throat was tightening weirdly.

Amy made a face at him. “Actually I have a feeling I’m never going to want to set foot in Ohio again after this year.”

“Get their votes and forget about ‘em. That’s how I like it.”

“There’s always 2020,” she said suddenly, and his breath caught a little.

There were so many _ifs_ in that casual _always_. If they won this election. If they were running again in four years. If they were still both working for Selina. 

If they hadn’t killed each other yet.

“Anyway, I got what I came for,” Amy said. He raised an eyebrow at her, and she raised one back at him. “About eight different bits of intel for future blackmail purposes.”

“But you said you wouldn’t tell Selina about—”

“That’s not counting the big one.”

Dan suppressed a smile. 

“Blackmail, huh? Talk dirty to me some more. I like that.”

She rolled her eyes and kicked in the shin with the toe of her heel. 

“Shove it, shitface.”

Dan ran a careless thumb over his calf. It smarted like hell, but to be honest, he didn’t mind that much.


End file.
